


Knit us Together

by SofiaDragon



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Actual fluff stuffing plush organs, Developing Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Explicit Consent, Fluff, He does not know what to do with them, John Watson Knits, Knitting, M/M, Mentioned Mary Morstan, No Mary Morstan, Oblivious John Watson, Oblivious Sherlock Holmes, Pre and Post Reichenbach, Pre-Slash, Sherlock Being Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes Has Feelings, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson Reunion, this prompt got out of hand
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-18 04:39:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17574041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SofiaDragon/pseuds/SofiaDragon
Summary: John takes up a hobby to regain the lost dexterity in his dominant hand. He starts a project that gets a little out of hand, as these things are wont to do, but ends up as the perfect birthday gift.Inspired by a prompt based on an article about a woman who crocheted an anatomically correct life-size skeleton, with the request that John makes one for Sherlock and the detective loves it. Background Mystrade if you wear those goggles, none if you don't.





	Knit us Together

**Author's Note:**

> Original prompt is talking about this amazing feat of creative knitting, I highly suggest giving it a look because no description I write will do it proper justice:  
> https://shanellpapp.com/art/textiles/
> 
> The wedding to Mary doesn't happen. Substitute your own reason why as I'm leaving that open, but I blame Mycroft for warning Sherlock about Mary's real identity in any story that does not specify.

John Watson was a respectable British gentleman, or at least he tried his best and apologized when his temper required him to spew profanity at everything in the vicinity. To that end, he felt rather poorly when Mrs. Hudson did too much cleaning up in 221B. Sure, Sherlock wasn't exactly tidy, but there was a difference between cluttered and messy. The detective really did know proper lab procedures for containing the experiments he ran and usually cleaned up any accidental spills when they happened lest they contaminate his workspace. He also used and reorganized the files, notebooks, and knickknacks that were strewn about the sitting room often enough that they weren't ever that dusty. When it came down to actual filth John could be just as lazy as Sherlock about leaving used cups and plates behind when they had a case on and were dashing in and out of the flat for a shower, nap, or change of clothes. As for getting the hoovering done, washing the curtains, dusting the higher shelves, and other chores, John wasn't any more likely to spontaneously do a deep cleaning than Sherlock was and both of them had a rather high tolerance for what constituted a filthy room. Mrs. Hudson, on the other hand, had a rather low tolerance. While Mrs. Hudson might protest that she wasn't their housekeeper on a regular basis, she still brought up ready to eat food, cleaned up behind them while they were out, and even picked up some groceries from time to time to stock the fridge. It was nice, and John was rather protective of the elderly woman due to the real care she showed them.

It was that guilt from having his landlady clean up after him that started John on this ridiculous path. Sometime around the Blind Banker case she'd asked for a hand tidying something in her own flat and John had gone down to repay some of his debt without knowing what the specific job was. He then spent the next two hours untangling and re-wrapping yarn for Mrs. Hudson and her friends. The old ladies twittered on about how helpful he was being and explained, at length and amid rather graphic descriptions of their medical conditions, that knitting helped with reclaiming and maintaining dexterity in their hands.

Mrs. H knew that John practiced with a scalpel on various cuts of meat, cutting pockets to stuff with herbs or cheese and stitching them shut among other experiments in creative butchery. Sherlock was always quite appreciative of the culinary experiments and examined the hesitation and tool marks for use in any cases involving creative butchery, then repaid John by having excellent pescatarian-friendly dishes delivered from various restaurants while the beef or lamb was in the oven. Sherlock himself avoided pork because of his work with corpses, something John informed the frustrating man that he could have mentioned when John told him about the sale at Tesco’s instead of after John had made four portions of elaborately stuffed loin. D.I. Lestrade had arrived during the row about waste that followed, and Sherlock unloaded the meat onto the older man so quick Lestrade was left standing stunned on the sidewalk outside 221B, bakeware in hand, for several minutes before he hurried home to get it cooking. At the end of that case Lestrade returned the dish and asked John where he bought the kid-friendly meal with its geometric stuffing, but Sherlock started talking loudly about Anderson's latest affair and got them evicted from the scene before any embarrassing admissions were made.

What the landlady was attempting by requesting John's help setting up for her knitting circle wasn't subtle. She knew that the intermittent tremor in his dominant hand was neither gone nor fading as quickly as John wanted it to and how much he upset himself when he fumbled things. John ended up going down to help them wind and detangle skeins a couple more times before they fully convinced him to keep his hands busy with something constructive while watching crap daytime telly with his landlady on days when he was idle.

Sherlock might not know that John had taken up knitting. In fact, John was nearly sure he didn't, though John could never be certain about these things until he asked in blunt terms. The detective might have deduced John's new little secret and simply thought it was beneath mentioning, he could have deleted it, or he could have missed it entirely. It really was remarkable the sorts of things he could miss or misinterpret. Still, John did his best not to leave any obvious clues. It was possible that Sherlock really didn't know given how critical he was of John's new jumpers, all hand made by members of Mrs. Hudson's knitting circle. Phrases like 'where do you even purchase something so hideous' certainly implied that the younger man hadn't cottoned on to John's textile-based pastime.

John had decided that he would tell Sherlock about his new hobby with the most dramatic reveal he could think of, and to that end he started making Sherlock a birthday present. He kept it in a box in Mrs. Hudson's sitting room so that it wouldn't be discovered accidentally. He had almost thrown it out after Sherlock jumped off Bart’s roof, but Mrs. Hudson had asked to keep the unfinished project when John went to clean it out for sentimental reasons as it had been complete enough for her standards.

Then, Sherlock turned up at John's clinic looking rather worse for wear but very much alive. In what passed for an emotional fit for a Holmes, the dark-haired man proceeded to deduce absolutely everything John had been through in the last two years including the fact that John was currently dating a retired assassin, with commentary on what he should have done or what Sherlock would have done in response to any perceived idiocy. That resulted in a black eye for Sherlock and a rather public break-up for John, and within a week the two men were back at Baker street trying to remember how to live together. Mrs. Hudson brought out the project box when John inevitably came down to visit her, and the work resumed. His plans became somewhat more elaborate than the gag gift the project had started out as, and he spent a fair amount of time working out the details.

Christmas was nicer than John thought it would be, given that both John and Sherlock's friendships had been heavily strained by the aftermath of Sherlock's 'hiatus' and return. Even with seven months of settling back in it wasn't the same as their previous Christmas parties. Molly was no longer infatuated with Sherlock, which triggered Sherlock to treat her much more like a respected colleague than a willing servant. John guessed that a fair amount of the residual distance Sherlock's time as a druggie had caused in his family had been worked out when Sherlock met with his parents to explain his faked death. Mr. Scott and Mrs. Violet Holmes had since made a habit of dropping in at least once a month, and they gossiped with Mrs. Hudson for most of the party. Greg was so glad for the drop in the number of unsolved crimes he brought some of his fine spirits to celebrate with. The D.I. managed to talk Mycroft into some sort of drinking game that ended with both of them being poured into a car by Mycroft's staff. John teased Sherlock's upcoming birthday surprise with his Christmas gift, wrapping some hazelnut chocolates atop a mystery box that he refused to put into context. The tall man spent most of the time after opening it distracted by the box full of oddly-shaped knitting, a torn-off section of a stained map, a snapped in half knitting needle, and a cheap cameo brooch John had found at a second-hand shop and intentionally damaged. The card read:

_The body in the garden, a birthday gift. What a killer gift he was. Three sisters to blame. No hints. Who did it?_

_Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and Enjoy,_

_John_

It was perhaps a bit unfair to give Sherlock a box of clues like that when it was only a tenth of the required information John expected him to need, but Sherlock still occasionally mentioned that he had been too obvious in his suicide note phone call and John should have deduced it was all a trick. Giving the man a taste of what it felt like to have the facts deliberately held back was only fair play, as it was in the note that the body wouldn't be in the garden until Sherlock's birthday. Still, John had to restrain himself as Sherlock first scoured their own back garden, and then went to every location in London he thought that John might describe as a garden looking for the body he'd been promised. The wait for January 6th gradually became more stressful as John would only respond to Sherlock's deductions with 'read the note again' no matter how close to the mark the excitable man was or wasn't.

John's alarm woke him at midnight. The new watch with its vibration alarm feature was the perfect Christmas gift for a soldier who still occasionally startled at sudden loud noises, and also for running a timer without alerting anyone. He crept downstairs as silently as he could. Sherlock was asleep in his room, recovering from his snit over John's 'bloody frustrating box of rubbish that probably doesn't even have a real solution' and a case that had him awake for 36 hours ending in them collecting a ludicrously large fee for their joint business bank account. The days of shouting over £5 of wasted pork and veg were well behind them. The project box was waiting for him in 221C and he got to work properly setting up Sherlock's gift. As he crept back upstairs Sherlock's mop of curls poked out of the loo.

"You're awake," Sherlock said around a yawn.

"Just got some fresh air, I couldn't sleep," John lied, but Sherlock was blinking sleepily so he'd probably get away with it.

"Your box of gibberish is still an abysmal Christmas gift, but can I come upstairs after?" Sherlock said, with a nod toward the loo. "There is no point in depriving ourselves of decent sleep."

"I never said you couldn't come up," John reminded him gently and hurried to get back in his pajamas. Sherlock came up and slithered into bed next to him.

"'S my birthday," he mumbled half asleep, "y've got t'tell me."

"After six am and breakfast, if you still want me to," John promised as long limbs wrapped around him securely. They were both asleep moments later.

Sherlock woke them both up at half five with a nightmare. This week seemed to be the brunette's turn to fight off PTSD, and they gave up on the bed to turn on all the lights in the flat and make breakfast. John very deliberately started peering out into the back garden through the kitchen window while they were washing up, though he was probably covered in all sorts of clues that something was afoot. Sherlock dried the last dish and stepped up behind John to look out the window into the pre-dawn gloom. John knew the exact second Sherlock spotted the body bag when the younger man twitched, though it was a moment before he spoke.

"The body in the garden, a birthday gift," Sherlock recited, his baritone voice pitched dangerously low. "That is horrifically unfair, John."

"Sometimes you don't get all the clues gift wrapped in one package," John countered. "In fact, you repeatedly describe cases where you do as boring and not worth leaving the flat."

"You got me a corpse." It was perhaps a bit abnormal to say those words in that tone of voice, but at least John knew Sherlock was appreciative. The overlarge child raced out into the back garden to claim his new toy in his pajamas and dressing gown. John bundled up quickly and followed with Sherlock's coat and slippers in hand, muttering to himself about how cooperative the weather was being for once. He was under no illusions that any amount of rain or cold would have altered Sherlock's behavior at all. Sherlock was crouched down muttering to himself as he examined the body in the garden when John reached him.

"It's 3C out here, Sherlock," John said with a smile, offering the detective his outerwear. Befuddled silver-green eyes turned on John. On the ground in front of them the body bag had been carefully opened to reveal a skeleton slightly shorter than John himself without skin or muscle but with all the major organs. It was anatomically correct but abstracted from perfect accuracy since it was made of crocheted yarn, buttons, ribbons and other craft supplies. The fabric of the scull and other bones had been starched stiff and the organs stuffed and shaped with care. The intestines were two long tube scarfs coiled carefully in place, the lungs made using modified instructions for knitting a tea cozy, and the stomach was a carefully shaped pocket that contained a bit of fluffy 'digestive acid' and some tiny plastic food from a child's play-set. Thin nylon threads held everything in place where the friction of a snug fit wasn't adequate, invisible in the moonlight. There was even a pair of walnut shells cheekily hanging from the pelvis area with red and white heart-pattered ribbon. "You didn't honestly expect an actual cadaver?"

"I'd hypothesized something between ballistics gel over a plaster skeleton and a dressed-up inflatable doll depending on the amount of time and work you put into creating it. How does one commission a knitted cadaver?"

"One doesn't," John chuckled. "One knits it himself, to the perpetual horror of the landlady's knitting circle one is getting advice from. If you catch cold, I will force you to visit a clinic even if you haven't finished the puzzle yet."

"Oh... oh! To regain the lost dexterity in your dominant hand, yes, I should have realized. I attributed the pressure marks and calluses on your fingers to using that medicinal fidget device you bought," Sherlock said as he hopped into his slippers and shrugged on his coat. "This is extraordinarily detailed! It must have taken ages to make."

"Yes, well, collect your evidence and let's get inside where there is light and heat. I do have to tell you a few things before you get properly started. The body bag was a concession to keep any frost or rain off it in case the weather turned. I'd originally thought I'd just lay it out under a tarp, but the starch I used would fail fairly quickly if it got damp and that might damage some evidence or create red herrings. I figured the less explanation I'd have to give due to failures or limitations of the construction the better. Just delete it from the scene as best you can, or else imagine the corpse was bagged by some over-eager newbie on forensics before you arrived and then arranged exactly into its original position inside the bag. It is meant to have been found skinned and decomposed enough to cover the irregularities in some of the organ shapes. A proper autopsy will be required to find all the trace evidence, some of which is symbolic because knitting things smaller than a certain size is fucking brutal. The absence of all musculature is another concession to the construction method as I know that removing all traces of connective tissue would require boiling the bones and that has not happened. To that end, assume that nothing useful could have been found in or on the remaining muscle beyond confirmation that the body was originally left in this location. Also, assume that they exist in a state consistent with a skinning clean enough that it suggests a bit of culinary training at minimum, though the level of decomposition makes assessing the exact skill level of the killer impossible," John explained.

"He has obviously been dead since the Christmas party, and the gift I gave you then is the evidence collected from the scene prior to our arrival this morning. The level of decomposition is not inconsistent with the time frame. For the purpose of this puzzle, 221A and B were empty because we were all away, Mrs. H on an extended holiday visiting family in America and us to Edinburgh on a case that became a bit of a holiday. We were called back when it was spotted by Mrs. Turner's ladies from their window yesterday evening and took the night train home." Their neighbors had actually been away on a second honeymoon until last night, the rather loud argument that detailed their trip an unexpected event which fit the narrative too perfectly to be left out.

Sherlock had his fists raised just in front of his chin in a joyful, twee little dance of delight by the end of John's narration. He took another very careful pass around the body dump site before delicately closing up the bag and flapping his hands impatiently at John until the doctor took up one end of the bag. The entire assembly was very carefully brought inside and laid on the sitting room floor with the box of clues John had given him for Christmas. John didn't want to help too much, but he did lay out his knitting needles, tweezers, a few re-purposed take-out containers, and fabric scissors while Sherlock was looking over the knit corpse with his magnifier.

"Proper tools for the autopsy," he explained when Sherlock gave him a raised eyebrow. The brilliant smile he received warmed John all the way through, though that didn't stop him from going to make a pot of fine loose-leaf tea for them to share. Sherlock put on trousers and a rather worn button-down to perform the autopsy, his sleeves rolled up the way he only did when working at home. He absolutely refused to permanently damage any of the knitting and was careful to cut only the nylon threads holding the pieces together and leave any connected organs as they were. This meant coaxing the stomach contents up through the esophagus or through the gaps between the stitches and ensured that it took much longer than John expected.

The bell rang two hours later. Sherlock didn't so much as glance away from the fluffy knitted entrails he was carefully picking through, so John hurried down to see what was going on.

"Where is it?" Lestrade asked when the door opened. While a visit from the D. I. wasn't abnormal, bringing Anderson and Donovan with him was.

"Sorry?" John asked.

"Sherlock explained to me that he'd gotten a corpse for his birthday this morning," Greg said.

"Oh, yes, I got that for him," John said.

"Dear god, really?" Donovan gasped, which was rather unnecessary.

 _"You_ got him a corpse?" Greg asked.

"Made him one, really, I mean what else can you get for him that he would really enjoy? I set the whole mystery up. He's nearly done performing the autopsy now," John explained, stepping back to let the three police officers in. "It's, well, I didn't think he'd want to share, but if he texted you. Come on up, I was just about to make some nibbles. You know how he is about eating when on a case."

"It is always the quiet ones," Anderson tutted as they followed John. Sherlock looked up at the noise and immediately protested.

"I told you I am not available for anything less than a ten," he insisted, pushing his sleeves down. "I am entitled to a day of leisure."

"Is that a macramé skeleton?" Donovan asked. The two men standing beside her appeared to be struck speechless.

"Don't be absurd," Sherlock scoffed, "most of it is clearly crochet. The only macramé on the skeleton itself is the distal phalanges."

"What do you have so far?" John asked.

"He had fish and chips from that shop you hate just before death," Sherlock answered deliberately vaguely, pointing in the necessary direction so that only John would understand which one he meant before picking up a tiny plastic fish with a pair of tweezers. "These are anchovies, not cod, and you always complain that the fish there stinks like old anchovies when I use it as a stakeout location." John nodded to confirm that this was a deliberate choice and not symbolic of fish in general - or rather that he'd worked the detail to his advantage after looking at his limited options for tiny plastic foodstuffs among the more realistic dollhouse accessories he'd found. Sherlock pointed at the most obvious clue, which was the carefully folded respiratory system next to him that had been partially stuffed with red ribbon to indicate inhaled blood. "He was killed using a knitting needle, plunged into his neck repeatedly until it broke, damaging the wind pipe and piercing the esophagus. The killer attempted to remove any lingering forensic evidence by skinning the victim. There was no skin and only a little bit of blood found at the scene..." Sherlock explained, holding up the box John gave him for Christmas full of 'blood splatter' and 'hair samples.'

"Wait, wait, wait," Greg interrupted. "This is the extremely interesting corpse you got for your birthday? A life size plush skeleton?"

"And a mystery, which will likely lead to concert tickets to that American group that is coming to London," Sherlock said as he worked another plastic chip out of the stomach. "Sorry, John, but you weren't exactly subtle about that part."

"I would never dream of dragging you to a concert or movie without ensuring your interest beforehand," John confirmed. "Although seeing The Piano Guys and Lindsay Sterling next week has nothing to do with solving this."

"But then... hmmm," Sherlock focused back on the knitting, delight and determination erasing some of the lines his hiatus had carved into his skin. "Go away Lestrade, I'm busy."

"You told them you had a corpse in here and didn't mention that it wasn't actually a murdered human?" John asked, scrubbing his face with one hand as the reality of the situation presented itself.

"I would think that it would be perfectly obvious that it wasn't a real corpse. I might have the permits to perform small scale experiments..." Sherlock began.

"Those permits cover trace evidence and samples of human tissue one gram or less in size, not whole thumbs," Lestrade pointed out.

"...but performing an autopsy of a complete corpse in here is ridiculous. We'd never fit it on the kitchen table and doing it this way would ruin the floor!"

Lestrade left, calling off the additional police that had been en route. John's phone rang shortly thereafter, and Mycroft demanded an explanation for the report he'd just received. John put it on speaker rather than be forced to play go-between. The uptight older man ended the call with a demand that Sherlock stop ignoring his phone and listen to their parents wish him a happy birthday before Mummy got upset enough to come visit.

The repeated interruptions upset Sherlock a bit, but he was immersed in the fictional crime again before long. When he realized that John had only specified that 221A and B were empty over the holidays in his opening narration, John handed over the key to the basement so that Sherlock could examine the 'victim's flat.' Once again second-hand dollhouse furnishings were in use, but that didn't seem to bother Sherlock in the slightest. In fact, he collected the lot and brought it upstairs to demand that John use the pieces to lay it out in proper scale with a few books for walls. Abbreviated interrogation transcripts were also in the basement flat for a family of women: A mother, and Aunt, and two daughters. John had made all the suspects female and related in an effort to make things a bit more confusing, as any gender- or family- specific clue would too quickly rule out a suspect otherwise.

"I have it!" Sherlock crowed, leaping up from the couch where they had been sitting as he contemplated the diorama of the original crime scene. "The victim, Mr. Cotton, was a handyman dating an heiress to a meat packing company but cheating on her with her much younger disinherited sister. The third sister mentioned in the original note is actually their mother's sister, who discovered the affair and blackmailed him, but the aunt was pleased enough by the free remodeling projects he was doing for her and did not want him dead or found out. That's what made Mr. Cotton a gift - the perceived charity he showed to their spinster aunt. You fabricated an excellent red herring, John, and not entirely irrelevant since there was some tension between the eldest daughter and her aunt." John stood up to take a bow to acknowledge the praise of his layered storytelling and Sherlock continued to announce his final deduction without realizing how close together they were standing.

"Mr. Cotton was killed by the mother in an emotional rage after he found out that the meat company was not keeping up their food safety standards and started threatening to go public if the slack wasn't taken up.  The blackmail letters the aunt had sent were discovered while the mother was trying to clean up the mess, and she called her eldest daughter and lied about the motive for the murder to enlist her help. He was skinned by the elder daughter, who was an accomplished amateur chef, in an effort to erase the damning evidence and protect her mother. Any hassle the blackmail letters might cause the aunt wasn't worried about and they assumed that she would be able to provide a strong alibi to go with the lack of any evidence the aunt had ever visited the flat. Three sisters to blame, but none of them was the actual killer."

"Amazing," John praised his flatmate just as he did after any case. Instead of the usual preening Sherlock generally reacted with, he leaned in the scant distance necessary to kiss John on the forehead. The gentle butterfly peck was over in an instant, leaving John momentarily stunned.

"Sorry," Sherlock said, backing away frantically. "That was... I didn't intend..."

"It's fine, Sherlock," John said, taking a breath to sort himself out.

"I know that it wouldn't be... It won't happen again," Sherlock said firmly.

"Look, we've been sharing a bedroom more and more often, and we just sort of started doing it without actually talking about it, but we do it because it helps with the nightmares and the stress after everything that, well, just after everything,” John said with an all-encompassing gesture. “I get that, and I know you're asexual. You don't have to force yourself into doing something you don't want to do because you think I..."

"No, no not... I'm not. That. I'm not _asexual_ ," Sherlock explained, flapping his hands around as if trying to swim through the unfamiliar subject matter and looking at everything in the flat except for John. "Sex isn't generally something I voluntarily waste time thinking about, yes, and I do have a low libido, but I am not... that is, it isn't _nonexistent._ In any case, I am gay but you are not gay so nothing will come of it. I'd say I've proven quite well that I can contain myself. Aside from just now, that is, which I am sorry for." John physically stopped the lanky man from winding himself up further by halting his expressive hands, squaring up in front of the detective so he couldn't be ignored.

"Wait, back up a moment. Just to be clear: you're fine with kissing me?" John asked, military firmness demanding a simple answer.

"Yes?" Sherlock responded hesitantly.

"That doesn't sound clear enough for me to consider it consent," John said, releasing Sherlock's arms and backing away a step to emphasize the point. "Which is rather a shame considering I sorted out that I was a little bit bisexual while you were gone."

"Yes, kissing is fine," Sherlock immediately said, nervously clarifying "good, even. Preferable to not kissing, but not preferable to ending our understanding about the sleeping arrangements."

"Good, that's good," John agreed with a decisive nod. "Care to try it again?"

"Yes, but," Sherlock cut himself off and leaned in, but John reached up to cup his cheeks and hold him off as gently as possible.

"But what, Sherlock?" Sherlock looked down at John nervously for a few seconds and clearly was not going to answer. "Right, so, really boring people with vanilla relationships that stay boring until they die can skip this sometimes, and most people build up to it after a bit of snogging at least, but I think maybe we start with it since we've managed to misunderstand each other so badly. Are you familiar with the term affirmative consent?"

"The term seems self-explanatory," Sherlock replied, finally relaxing a little. John dropped back down onto the sofa and patted the cushion next to him. He waited for Sherlock to sit down before elaborating.

"It is mostly, I suppose. We do nothing without asking for and receiving permission - verbal permission and with no ambiguity or deductions - and make it clear where the boundaries are, both the hard limits and the more flexible ones. Then we respect those boundaries and talk about it if they change. For example: I'm going to have to give anything penetrative a hard pass, at least for now. I may have sorted out that I was bisexual in theory, but I've never put it into practice and I don't know how much time I might need to adjust," John said as calmly as he could, though he was blushing brightly enough Sherlock could probably feel the heat from his perch on the far end of the couch.

"Right, so it is my turn?" Sherlock asked, but barreled ahead without waiting for an answer, his cheeks just a pink as John's and his eyes fixed on the coffee table. "I may have deleted a lot of the relevant data, but I find unprotected anal sex to be rather unsanitary and I doubt anything will ever distract me from that thought well enough for me to perform it on another person; however, I have used and enjoyed assistive devices that simulate the act being performed on myself." John summoned every ounce of medical professionalism to summarize.

"So, no internal exchange of bodily fluids until further notice. Is that good enough to start or is there something else you want to be sure of before you can relax?"

"I propose an exemption for any incidental exchange of saliva caused by enthusiastic kissing," Sherlock squeaked out.

"Agreed."

"I can kiss you now?" Sherlock asked, flexing his fingers and generally fidgeting in place. "And later, spontaneously, or do I need to get verbal permission before each instance?"

"Yes, and generally yes, spontaneous kissing is welcome, though I'm not big on excessive public displays," John confirmed, inching closer to the middle of the couch.

"Can we define excessive public displays after I thank you for the excellent birthday present the way I want to?" Sherlock asked quietly. The panic was gone, Sherlock's usual catlike grace in evidence as he moved closer.

"That's fine," John murmured as the distance between them closed properly, "we've got plenty of time."

Four months later, Sherlock replaced the battered side table that sat next to John's armchair with a custom one with a glass cabinet for a base. He carefully folded the reassembled crochet skeleton inside in a crouching position with its hands tacked up as if bracing the tabletop. He presented this to John to commemorate the anniversary of Sherlock's return from the dead, excited that it could be properly on display while being protected from stains and incidental damage. John tried to argue that it wasn't intended to be a displayed piece of artwork, but Sherlock managed to convince him that the yarn man was now part of their decor with an argument that relied heavily on the fact that John could not see Mr. Cotton at all when seated in his chair as long as there was something on the table, and there was always something on John's side table.


End file.
